The images we are working
with are for the most part recorded on Kodak film stock which over the last 50
years has deteriorated. The resolution of the images is excellent, in that they
were recorded on either 4X5 or 8x10 transparencies. The problem resides in the
color deterioration (magenta shift) which is an intrinsic fault of the original
KODAK stock. While these images will never be restored to their original
brilliance, with the help of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, we
have been able to make a bold step toward 90% restoration. the following images
illustrate:

1. The original state of the positive transparencies.

2. A desk top correction through limited software.

3. The Academy-Lab restoration.

The images we are
presenting in the King & I chapter of the DeCuir biography, see
http://www.cinematix.us/decuirbio.htm , are only desktop restorations, so
keep in mind that the final product will have the brilliance and resolution of
the Academy-Lab restoration.

With each passing hour the
original film stock shifts a little closer to being irretrievable. As a result
your support towards these restoration efforts is extremely important.

Original Transparency

Desktop Restoration

Academy Lab Restoration

“HOLLYWOOD’S DA VINCI”

The Art of

Legendary Film Designer John de Cuir

Proposal In Brief:

A
coffee-table book chronicling the career and featuring the artwork of art
director/production designer John De Cuir (1918-1992), three-time Oscar winner,
among the greatest film designers in the history of Hollywood.

Proposal Overview:

During his
fifty-five years in the movies, De Cuir designed the look of an astonishing
number and range of classic films, from “The King and I” to “Ghostbusters,” from
the Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner vehicle, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” to the
Steve Martin comedy, “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” from “South Pacific” to
“Hello, Dolly.” And then, of course, there was his work heading up the greatest
art project in moviedom: the most visually elaborate, most staggeringly
expensive motion-picture ever made up to that point, the “Titanic” of its day:
“Cleopatra,” starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

A Renaissance man— set designer,
painter, illustrator, and architect De Cuir became one of the most famous
production designers in motion picture history, and was recognized by his peers
as the greatest film artist (i.e. draftsman, illustrator, and painter) of all
time. Nominated for a total of eleven Academy Awards, he won three outright and
shared in a fourth by (leading to a famous truce and deal with studio chief
Darryl Zanuck of 20th Century Fox, to be explained in our book). He
added an Emmy to his list of honors for his work on the television special,
“Ziegfeld: The Man and His Women.”

“Hollywood’s da Vinci” will
present, for the first time ever, artwork from the De Cuir Collection, thought
to be the finest private holding of original film art in the world, including De
Cuir’s:

·Illustrations.
(250) His original pre-visualizations of each of his films (including tempera
renderings, pastels, and water colors)

·Oil paintings
(35) of actors, film sets, and environments

·Quick Sketches
(1750) and film storyboards

·Film Transparencies:
(80) high resolution, full-color renderings of lost original work

·Various artifacts,
including design notebooks and scripts.

These materials, and the dazzling
film art they contain, have never before been published or made available to the
public. They are a treasure trove of images from several dozen of Hollywood’s
best-loved and most beautiful movies.

“Hollywood’s da Vinci” will demonstrate how John De Cuir invented the look of so
many of these pivotal films and show how the look of so many pivotal films
sprang from the mind and the brush of one man.

This will be a book designed to delight the eye with movie art, excite the
memory of movie-lovers, and entertain the reader with accompanying text on
behind-the-scenes tales of the movies and the movie business that John de Cuir
knew.

Writers:

·John
de Cuir, Jr. (son of de Cuir), himself a distinguished production designer, with
credits including “Top Gun,” Turner & Hooch,” and “Sister Act 2.” Intermingled with his film design projects, John
has been a longtime consultant to the Walt Disney Company’s film-attraction
ventures, including “Jim Henson’s 3-D Muppet Movie,” “Alien Encounter,” and the
Epcot Center’s “Energy Pavilion.” De Cuir has
taught at the UCLA Performing Arts Program and USC’s School of Cinema, Graduate
Program. He is a member of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences and
the Art Director’s Guild.

·A preface
by Huddles discussing how the now-vanished premium on production design in
movies (and especially in independent movies) has affected younger filmmakers,
today’s films, and the enjoyment-factor for current audiences.

·The preface
will include a brief account of what a production designer actually does, step
by step, to create the look of a film, and how the time and resources allotted
to production design differ today from the resources of entire art departments
in the studios of yesteryear.

·The preface
will speak with a personal voice about the art of film design from a current
writer-director’s point of view, offering the reader an intimate rather than
academic introduction to the material.

·A single
chapter by De Cuir, Jr. on his father’s background and early life.

·This
chapter will include a portrait of De Cuir as he grew up in the California of
the 1920’s, when
motion pictures were first coming into their own. Despite the wishes and demands
of De Cuir’s parents that he become a concert violinist (which he managed to fit
in on the side!), the boy’s passion from the age of six was drawing and
painting, a passion which soon intersected with another family force, De Cuir’s
uncle, Louis Kolb, who was first a sound technician and later head of the
electrical department at MGM. (The electrical department is not the division
that oversees a studio’s wiring, but the team that manages the lighting on the
set of a film, in the service of the cinematographer, illuminating actors and
scenery.)

·The roads were still dirt when
Uncle Louis took his seven year-old nephew over to “Fox Ranch,” now Century
City, to spend his Saturdays wandering through film stages. Once de Cuir had
watched the filming of “Ben-Hur” (the 1925 version), and later quietly observed
from behind the camera the work of John Barrymore, Jeannette McDonald, and
William Powell, his career choice was sealed.

·This chapter will continue through
to the formal beginnings of de Cuir’s career. As a young man, he broke into the
film business as a sketch artist/illustrator on such classic sci-fi/fantasy
pictures of the 1930’s as:

·“The Bride of Frankenstein”

·“Marco Polo”

·“Ali Baba & The Seven Thieves”

·De Cuir also worked on Hitchock’s
and Bob Boyles “Saboteur” as an optical matte artist during this first phase of
his career. His artwork from these early pictures has been preserved in the De
Cuir Collection and will enliven the pages of this introductory chapter.

·The bulk of the
book: 10-15 chapters, each chapter devoted to a single film in De Cuir’s career.
(See sample chapter below on “The King & I.”)

·Each chapter
will contain 1500-2000 words of text in John De Cuir Jr’s first-person voice,
recounting inside stories and anecdotes from the making of his father’s films,
lavishly interlaced with illustrations from and photographs of De Cuir’s work on
the particular film featured in the given chapter.

·Each chapter will
present De Cuir’s original pre-visualization designs for a given film as well as
stills from the finished movie: in other words, before-and-after comparisons of
how De Cuir designed the film to look and how it actually looked when all was
said and done , so that the reader can follow the process from imagination to
execution.

·Each chapter will
begin with a quotation about De Cuir and his work from the movies stars and
directors with whom he worked. In addition to already existing quotations, we
will be seeking new remarks from those colleagues of De Cuir’s still alive. For
example, but not limited to: